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(1) Kris Maher and Tom McGinty, The Fall of King Coal Hits Hardest in the Mines in the Kentucky. Wall Street Journal, Nov 27, 2013 (front page).
http://online.wsj.com/news/artic ... 4579212262280342336
Quote:
(a) "Since he was laid off from his mining job in January, William Hensley * * * went from making $82,000 a year as an underground foreman to collecting about $15,000 in unemployment benefits this year. But that aid is set to run out in December and mining jobs are scarce. * * * Chris Sexton, 32, of Blackey, Ky., in Letcher County, followed his grandfathers, father and brother into the mines a week after he graduated high school. After he was laid off in June 2012, he decided to train to be an emergency medical technician, which now pays him $12 an hour, compared to $26 an hour he earned as a miner. * * * Those with mining jobs are grateful for them. "I guess I'm one of the few left," said Garry Cox, 53, who now works as a foreman at a surface mine earning $14.40 an hour, much less than he once earned during three decades of mining.
(b) "competition among mines [particularly those in two other big coal basins centered in Wyoming and Illinois] has heated up. It costs utilities about 40% more to generate the same amount of electricity using the [eastern Kentucky] region's coal compared with coal from Wyoming, according to industry analysts. Coal from Wyoming doesn't generate as much electricity per ton and costs more to transport. Still, it is a better deal for utilities because the costs to mine coal from seams 60-feet thick are far less [compare with quotation (d) on thickness of coal seam in eastern Kentucky].
"In Central Appalachia, the region's coal seams are thinner, and so are mining companies' profit margins. It typically costs $60 to $70 to extract a ton of coal there, while the current price for coal from the region used by utilities, known as thermal coal, is under $65 a ton.
"Even West Virginia and Virginia have some advantages over eastern Kentucky. They possess higher grades of coal, including more reserves of metallurgical coal used in steelmaking that currently sell for about $150 a ton. Less direct rail routes out of eastern Kentucky also make its coal more expensive to transport.
(c) "Analysts have started to compare Central Appalachia to other mined-out areas around the globe, such as Germany's Ruhr valley, or Great Britain, which employed 6,000 coal miners last year, compared with 150,000 in 1983, according to the British government.
(d) "Paul Swanson, 46, of Cawood [a coal town in Harlan County], Ky, [ ] was laid off the day before Thanksgiving in 2012 from a mine with a 27-inch-thick coal seam, which requires miners to work on their knees.
(e) "Coal accounted for 39% of US electricity generation through August of this year, compared to 27% for natural gas. In 2003, coal powered 51% of generation, compared to 17% for natural gas. Utilities have frequently cited new emissions standards among reasons for closing aging coal-fired power plants.
Note:
(a) Both City (county seat) and County of Harlan are named after Silas Harlan, a pioneer (who otherwise was not notable).
(b) "Eastern Kentucky, which produced more than 128 million tons of coal in 1990, mined just 45 million tons in 2012."
This is yearly production, compared with the graphic, whose vertical bar each is a QUARTERLY figure.
(c) Quotation (c) tells us why coal industry of Ruhr valley and Britain (the cradle of Industrial Revolution) are no longer in the news since pime minister Margaret Thatcher.
End of an Industrial Era: Germany to Close its Coal Mines. Der Spiegel, Jan 30, 2007
http://www.spiegel.de/internatio ... mines-a-463172.html
("German black coal production has shrunk from 150 million tons in 1957, the heyday of the postwar economic miracle, when the industry employed 607,000 miners, to 25.6 million tons in 2005")
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发表于 11-27-2013 11:54:33
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